Unmarriageable(100)

The Binglas had also given Jena a beautiful set of solid gold and diamond bracelets, as well as gifts and suit pieces to the rest of the Binats. Bungles’s father and Mr Binat got along well. They talked about politics and gardening and life in Dilipabad and life in California. Jena was very sweet to Hammy and Sammy. She was always sweet to everyone, but this time she was fully aware of her sisters-in-laws’ duplicitous, cunning and manipulative capabilities.

Hammy and Sammy acted as if they’d always been madly in love with Jena and it was Bungles who’d been stalling. The fact was, they adored their baby brother, and if he wanted to ruin his life and marry ‘senior citizen’ Jena Binat despite their objections, then so be it. Such was their change of heart that they even declared D-bad a most charming and quaint town and High Chai hip and happening. Jaans behaved as best as he could and reminded everyone, every so often, that he’d predicted this coupling at first sight.

Darsee had accompanied them too. Alys watched him offer enthusiastic congratulations when Bungles slid the ring onto Jena’s finger and Jena the engagement band the Binats had hurriedly procured for Bungles from a thrilled Ganju jee. Darsee discussed sports and politics with Mr Binat. He ignored Mrs Binat just as resolutely as she ignored him. He and Alys nodded hello to each other as if they were strangers. Alys wished she could thank him for paying Wickaam to marry Lady, but this crowded drawing room was neither the time nor the place.

After her future in-laws left Dilipabad to return to Lahore, Jena kept bursting into blissful tears. She’d truly given up hope of reconciliation with Bungles, for she’d believed that, even if he did reappear in her life, there was nothing he could say that would win her over or excuse his previous display of a weak will. But he had won her over and Jena’s happiness knew no bounds, for herself as well as the fact that she was giving her family so much pleasure.

However, Jena supposed her favourite moment would be walking into the staff room the next morning with celebratory sweets and a ring on her finger. And it was. There was not a dry eye in the school or a moment of ill will; everyone loved Jena, and they hoped she would live happily ever after.



Alys was still smiling over the loving reception Jena had received in the staff room when Bashir, the peon, knocked on the classroom door. She turned to him with a knowing glimmer in her eyes.

‘Let me guess,’ Alys said. ‘Mrs Naheed wants to see me.’

‘Immediately,’ Bashir said, looking very scared. ‘There is someone here to see you.’

It was Beena dey Bagh. When she saw Alys, she ordered Naheed to leave the office. Naheed had never been kicked out of anywhere, let alone her own office, but she walked out wordlessly onto the veranda. When the door banged shut, Naheed and Bashir crouched together by the keyhole.

‘A pretty penny,’ Beena dey Bagh was saying, ‘your parents and relatives must have collected in order to buy my disastrous nephew Jeorgeullah for your sister, who, from all reports, is a girl of a disastrously loose character. As for this mess Bungles has got himself into by getting engaged to your sister Jena, well, he will face the consequences of such a rash decision. But that is not why I have come here.’

‘Why have you come?’ Alys stood in the confines of the head teacher’s office, matching, gaze for gaze, the towering Beena dey Bagh.

‘You dare speak to me, an elder, in such a tone?’

‘And your tone is justified because I’m younger?’

‘I don’t have time for your nonsense. I’m here to ask only one question, and the only answer I’d better hear is a no.’

‘What is your question?’ Alys said. ‘I have a class to return to.’

‘I’ll see how long you last in the teaching profession,’ Beena dey Bagh snarled. ‘My question to you, you rude, arrogant woman: are you engaged to Valentine?’

‘Engaged to Valentine?’

‘It is a well-known fact that you Binat sisters are well versed in the art of bad magic and love spells. First you tried to grab Valentine’s friend Raghav—’

‘Raghav is gay,’ Alys said. ‘You know that.’

‘Nothing a nice girl can’t fix, except you are not a nice girl.’

‘You can’t “fix” gay. It’s a biological—’

‘Chup. Silence. I was watching you at Versailles flirting with Raghav, and when you couldn’t seduce him, you turned your attentions to my nephew. Girls of your class know exactly how to use their ways and wiles to grab men.’

‘Girls of my class!’ Alys squinted. ‘I am happy to burst your bubble, but “grab-it” transcends all classes. Class is immaterial to—’

‘Chup. Silence,’ Beena dey Bagh said again. ‘Don’t you dare lecture me on class. Have you lost all sense of your place in the world?’

‘What place would that be?’

‘A place where you should not be able to open your mouth in front of me, let alone dream of being engaged to a dey Bagh. Who are you? Nothing and no one.’

‘I’m a Binat,’ Alys said, ‘from my father’s side of the family, and in your worldview that is not nothing or no one.’

‘Yes, you’re a Binat. Albeit a poor lowly Binat, pseudo-gentry,’ Beena dey Bagh sneered. ‘But your mother’s family. Your grandmother. Let me be absolutely crass about it: your maternal grandmother was a prostitute.’